Dakota Road

Nick Ward is an experienced writer/director of stage,
radio and TV. In this, his first film, he displays a talent for literate
cinema, too. Isolated from the outside world, and from one another, the lives
of a farm labourer's family, an orphan boy, a widowed landowner, and a
hypocritical vicar are affected by a stream of events which dredge up the past
and muddy the present.

Bored by her dull, rural existence, 15-year-old Jen
Cross (Charlotte Catton) dreams of reaching the heights of passion with a
handsome pilot from the local American air base. Brought down to earth by
fumbling sex with orphaned signalman Raif (Jason Carter), Jen is later caught
in the act by the Reverend Douglas Stonea (David Warrilow). Jen's father
Bernard (Matthew Scurfield), already angry at being sacked by landowner Alan
Brandon (Alan Howard) - a frustrated widower who then adds to the indignity by
employing Bernard's wife Maud (Amelda Brown) as a cleaning woman - now sinks
into a smouldering, jealous rage. Together with some oblique remarks made by
Jen to her tag-along 11-year-old sister Amy (Rachel Scott), her father's
extreme reaction hints at some darker family secret.

Framing both the wide vistas and the claustrophobic
interiors with a painterly eye, the director also coaxes sympathetic
performances from a good cast, whose facial expressions and subtle body
language add another dimension to the sparse but effective dialogue.
Occasionally, the inertia that afflicts the characters also arrests the flow of
the narrative, but, for the most part, Ward's direction and Ian Wilson's
sublime photography capture the feel of a bleak fen country with just a glimmer
of hope on the distant horizon.

Nigel Floyd

Time Out, 15-22nd July 1992.

Dakota Road

Talented new British writer-director Nick Ward makes
a striking debut with Dakota Road, an original though small-scale
picture of considerable merit. Selling the pic to the public may be tough, but
critical reactions should be positive.

Despite its title, the film is British in every
sense. Set in the Fen country in Norfolk, in a tiny farming community close to
a U.S. air base (hence the title), the pic deals with the effects of recession
and pollution on a small group of ordinary Brits. It's also about repressed
emotions and the difficulties of communication.

None of these subjects make for popular cinema, but
audiences worldwide should appreciate this understated but strongly emotional
drama.

Only name actor here is Alan Howard (the lover in
Peter Greenaway's The Cook, The Thief, His Wife And Her Lover) who plays
Alan Brandon, a widowed, small-time landowner living a solitary existence and
quietly lusting after the wife and teenage daughter of Bernard Cross (Matthew
Scurfield), who works for him as a labourer.

Cross and his wife, Maud (Amelda Brown) exist in a
sterile marriage punctuated by violence and desperate quarrels. They have two
daughters: teenage Jen (Charlotte Chatton) is involved in a loveless sexual
liaison with Raif Benson (Jason Carter), an orphan who lives with the old lady
who runs the local store and post office. The younger daughter, Amy (Rachel
Scott) is a wide-eyed, old-beyond-her-years tyke who observes
everything.

Brandon fires Cross, but hires Maud as a cleaning
woman, partly to have a desirable woman around the house. Unable to cope with
no longer being a breadwinner, Cross kills himself, but, by a quirk of fate,
his body isn't found, and it's thought that he's just disappeared.

Meanwhile, Jen is pregnant, but can't face the
thought of marriage to Raif (who, it's hinted, may be the illegitimate son of
the local priest, Rev. Stonea). She has a vibrant, but possibly imagined,
sexual encounter with an American flyer she meets in the woods.

These are the bare bones of an apparently grim little
tale of wasted lives. Bleakness of the film is alleviated by the freshness of
Ward's approach, the extraordianry camerawork of Ian Wilson and the fine
ensemble performances.

Dakota Road was made on a modest budget as one
of the first pictures to emerge from the British film partnership established
by former British Screen topper Simon Relph. It's an artistic winner, and the
problem now will be to find the audience it deserves. More should be heard from
Ward, already an established playwright, in the future.

StratVariety, 4.3.91. (Reviewed at
Berlin Film Festival, 18.2.91)

Dakota Road

Nick Ward's 'Dakota Road', Jocelyn
Moorhouse's 'Proof' and Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro's 'Delicatessen' have
been nominated for one of the top Ernst and Young British Film Institute (BFI)
awards.

The three independent films are competing
for the Sutherland Trophy, given to the most original first or second feature
to premiere at the National Film Theatre in 1991.